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Second to Last: The Weird Tanner story

NoBoG this week saw my good friend Lewis turn 26 on the 26th and not one but two games of Ticket to Ride 10th anniversary edition. Elliott had a friend down who wanted to practice the game before the Ticket to Ride tournament at the UK Games Expo in June, an event and a tournament that I shall also be attending.

Last week we played Lords of Vegas.

There is an age old saying about waiting ages for a bus then two turning up at once, well that is exactly what happened with Ticket to Ride. I can’t even remember the last time I have played that game at NoBoG and it was great to play the 10th anniversary edition as it is simply a very beautiful game.

At the table we had Elliott and his friend stacey who had come down to get some practice at the game, in addition to them there was AJ, Shaun and myself. After a bit of confusion with the tickets we began our first game, like most people I decided to keep all three of my starting tickets and managed to get into an early lead.

Despite some aggressive opening moves in the first game everyone still seemed pretty happy about things. Meanwhile I was just chilling in the centre of the board and avoiding being in conflict with the other players. I even managed to complete all three of my tickets in good time and swiftly went for two more which I thought that I could do.

However by this point the board was starting to fill up and the one route I needed was also needed by stacey but Shaun swooped in and took it before either of us could get there. Shaun didn’t even need it as he only got it for the points but in doing so he inadvertently stopped me from completing a ticket which meant I had to loose 11 points at the end of the game.

Even though I managed to get another 15 point route and complete a total of 4 tickets, it wasn’t enough to beat shaun who ran away with the victory. If only I had been a bit cleaver at the end of the game as I could have nabbed the longest route which would have closed the gap considerably but alas it wasn’t to be.

Our first game of Ticket to Ride ended remarkably quickly considering I was one of the players (I’m not known for my speed), so we decided to have one more game to see if Shaun could be beaten. Oh and too let Stacey have a bit more practice of course.

When it came to the second game I didn’t get a good combination of tickets and so I only went for two, somehow I managed to mistake one of the destinations which sent me on a path to a place where I wouldn’t get many points. After a mistake like that the only was down and instead of leading the pack, I was trailing behind for the vast majority of the game.

The second round saw a lot more hoarding of cards and despite my best efforts I just couldn’t get the cards that I needed. Meanwhile Elliott had a change of fortunes after coming fourth in the first game as he successfully managed to claim several high scoring routes, blocking Shaun in the process.

Stacey looked like she had learnt a lot from the first game as she also had a change of fortunes. Meanwhile AJ and myself were in pretty much the same boat in the second game but he came out of it slightly better than I did. Shaun came a respectable third while Stacey got second place, our winner for the second round was Elliott who was pretty chuffed about winning.

It was at this point that most of the table left and others came down to play a game of One night Ultimate Werewolf to end the night. Lewis broke out his copy and narrated three games in a row which is pretty good going. Over the course of three rounds I went from being a villager to being a tanner before ending the night by robbing a werewolf.

However the best play of the night went to Lewis who claimed to be a drunk, a role that almost always casts suspicion on the one who claims it. He had a lot of people fooled but didn’t just enough to be lynched in one of the closest votes I have ever seen. Congratulations to Lewis on winning the third and final round of the night and I hope he had an absolutely fantastic night of gaming on his birthday.